David Vanek served as a Provincial Court judge from 1968 until 1989 when he retired. He was called to the Bar of Ontario in 1939, just as World War II was breaking out in Europe. During the war Vanek served in the Canadian Intelligence Corps and Field Security in England from 1943 to 1945. Upon his return to Toronto, he worked as a lawyer in private practice before he took a post as lecturer at the newly created Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto. After four years of teaching at U of T, he took the position of general counsel with a construction and land development company where he practiced in the area of real property When he left that position, eight years later, he opened his own private practice. Prior to his appointment to the Bench, he ran (unsuccessfully) for the Ontario Provincial Legislature (1963) and helped to create The Credit Counselling Service of Metropolitan Toronto, a charitable organization. During his career as a criminal court judge, he served as president of the Ontario Provincial Judges’ Association. He retired in 1989 and published his autobiography a decade later.
Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History Books
Fulfilment: Memoirs of a Criminal Court Judge (Toronto: The Osgoode Society and Dundurn Press, 1999) 312 pp.
